“They predict the future. The consulter himself throws grain upon the cards; Bilouche comes and pecks it. Astaroth crawls over the cards to get the food the client holds for him, and those two wonderful intelligences are never mistaken. Will you see them at work?--you will then know your future. The cost is a hundred francs.” Gazonal, horrified by the gaze of Astaroth, rushed into the antechamber, after bowing to the terrible old woman. He was moist from head to foot, as if under the incubation of some evil spirit. “Let us get away!” he said to the two artists. “Did you ever consult that sorceress?” “I never do anything important without getting Astaroth’s opinion,” said Leon, “and I am always the better for it.” “I’m expecting the virtuous fortune which Bilouche has promised me,” said Bixiou. “I’ve a fever,” cried Gazonal. “If I believed what you say I should have to believe in sorcery, in some supernatural power.” “It may be only natural,” said Bixiou. “One-third of all the lorettes, one-fourth of all the statesmen, and one-half of all artists consult Madame Fontaine; and I know a minister to whom she is an Egeria.” “Did she tell you about your future?” asked Leon. “No; I had enough of her about my past. But,” added Gazonal, struck by a sudden thought, “if she can, by the help of those dreadful collaborators, predict the future, how came she to lose in the lottery?” “Ah! you put your finger on one of the greatest mysteries of occult science,” replied Leon. “The moment that the species of inward mirror on which the past or the future is reflected to their minds become clouded by the breath of a personal feeling, by an idea foreign to the purpose of the power they are exerting, sorcerers and sorceresses can see nothing; just as an artist who blurs art with political combinations and systems loses his genius. Not long ago, a man endowed with the gift of divining by cards, a rival to Madame Fontaine, became addicted to vicious practices, and being unable to tell his own fate from the cards, was arrested, tried, and condemned at the court of assizes. Madame Fontaine, who predicts the future eight times out of ten, was never able to know if she would win or lose in a lottery.” “It is the same thing in magnetism,” remarked Bixiou. “A man can’t magnetize himself.” “Heavens! now we come to magnetism!” cried Gazonal. “Ah ca! do you know everything?” “Friend Gazonal,” replied Bixiou, gravely, “to be able to laugh at everything one must know everything. As for me, I’ve been in Paris since my childhood; I’ve lived, by means of my pencil, on its follies and absurdities, at the rate of five caricatures a month. Consequently, I often laugh at ideas in which I have faith.” “Come, let us get to something else,” said Leon. “We’ll go to the Chamber and settle the cousin’s affair.”